Subscription fatigue and related musings (opens in new tab)

In the older model, you could purchase hardware and associated software and even if the company stopped supporting either, you still had a basic working system that might last for ten years or more with care. You could still send email, type up documents, send to a printer (that's a whole other story now), and have a useful functional tool, even if a lot of the web would stop working over time.

Now it all seems to be about accelerated obsolescence, ensuring products have short lifetimes to force consumers to adopt the latest products. Backwards compatibility gets dropped, deliberate strategies are introduced to force anyone wanting a banking app on their phone to upgrade to the latest model, etc.

My solution has been to switch over to Linux for almost anything computer-related, except for some business things where you have to interact with the Apple/Microsoft world. Unfortunately mobile phones are much worse and you need to keep updating the mobile phone well before the hardware fails, and even there I occasionally contemplate dropping the smartphone entirely... Can't wait for full Linux-on-mobile.

I just buy nothing at all from the app store

yeah I'd like a night sky app, happy to pay a one off fee (even $20) and for upgrades

but not a monthly subscription

Actually, Apple would get more revenue the other way. They only take 15% on subscription revenue after the first year.

Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their schedule, or if they don't then they don't lose anything they already have, they merely don't gain the new features. Which in turn is one of the few truly hard direct bits of incentivizing feedback, developers don't get money "by default", but must earn it each time.

I struggle to understand how suddenly it's like the entire idea of upgrades seems to have vanished. Why would a one time payment mean updates forever for free? But why would it mean subscriptions either?

Edit: Maybe if there is anyone truly to blame as the root of this evil it's Apple for being massively hostile to updates in the App Store for reasons that I will never understand either. That really sucks and probably forced subscriptions on the general population more than any other single actor. For that reason alone I really hope to see alternative stores forced on them by law.

Subscriptions do indeed fund perpetual development in a way that one time purchases don't, but the implication that comes along with that is that features are to be added along the way. If you only released maintenance patches, you subscriber satisfaction would dry up really darn fast.

So now we have this model where publishers charge subscriptions so that they can keep their business stable or growing, and subscribers are demanding features be added so that they're getting value for the ever-growing total cost of ownership. And what do you get from that? Feature Bloat.

The subscription model insists that successful products need to continually grow their code base, complexity, and feature set. The idea of stable streamlined applications that do a few jobs really well and otherwise stay out of the way is very hard to sustain in a world of subscriptions.

The alternative -- which was common in the past and remains common among many (not all) game publishers now -- is to temporarily expand your team payroll with talent that produces the product, and then scale it back to warranty the product with necessary maintenance patches while your emphasis turns to growing the market through sales instead of growing the product through features. Later, perhaps, you create another related product or a successor product.

It can and does still work, and it can make for very high quality products that don't become bloated monstrosities. If subscription fatigue is making the news, I'm sure will see a resurgence of this model soon enough.

> That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever.

This. While justified, so many apps messed up the switch to subscriptions.

We recently switched our app Genius Scan to a subscription model, but tried to do it The Right Way: users who had purchased the pro features automatically got subscribed to our Plus plan for life.

New users will have to subscribe though, as it's the only way to be sustainable.

We also introduced a new plan, Ultra, with more advanced features. This way, we still get a chance for long time users to support us if they upgrade to the Ultra plan.

I can only assume this is a deliberate omission to push people into subscriptions.

Or until it stops working with an OS upgrade/update.

No, it's not. Sustainably building an app requires revenue. Whether that revenue comes in the form of a subscription, a one-time payment, or multiple payments in return for updates does not matter to the developer. There's this idea that people are idiots, not knowing that they're paying more if it's a subscription. If that's your business model, you're screwed, because it doesn't work that way.

What makes subscription-only even worse is that it's a big burden to keep track of subscriptions and, if you decide to cancel, putting up with all that BS. I spend far less on software as a result of subscription models. I don't have time to play those games.

> And I'd much rather have a few really good apps than a plethora of half-baked ad-ridden garbage.

That's not the choice that's being made.

This is incorrect, as evidenced by the entire history of software development before the App Store, as well as software now that is sold outside the App Store.

When developers can choose their own business model, outside the constraints out the App Store, they overwhelming do not choose subscriptions. Indie devs outside the Mac App Store still largely follow the traditional upfront paid with paid upgrade model.

The subscription model was started mostly by BigCos such as a Adobe and Microsoft, who had a monopolistic market share for their software suites and thus could bleed a captive audience for almost unlimited amounts of money.

The ahistoricalness of the claim "subscriptions were always the only viable business model" really bothers me. It feels like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Cupertino Complex?

Let's call it what it is: software rental. Long-term rental is almost never a good deal for consumers over ownership.

> One-time up front purchases only reward developers for expanding the target market of their product; whether the product improves over time has no bearing on revenue.

This seems ridiculous to me, as a developer. Improving your product over time is one of the most important ways you can expand the target market of your product. I mean, why do you think Apple keeps making a new iPhone ever year? Were they going to keep expanding their market by still selling the 2007 model of iPhone in 2023?

Many people are perfectly happy with old versions of software - they don't need the new improvement, so they don't buy it. If anything, subscriptions somewhat disconnect the feedback of improvements, right? Users have to subscribe to use your software, and most of the time they'll do it whether you make your software better or not, unless there is a direct competitor that is easy to switch to (or becomes so superior they overcome inertia).

I agree that in theory, a subscription is not necessarily bad - but most of the time people are happy with some set of features, and do not necessarily need a continuously improved product. In that sense, subscriptions are forcing people to spend more money on software improvements they may not need. I guess this is probably good for software developers, but bad for people in general (This applies more to tools than a continuous service that requires significant maintenance to keep up to date anyway, I suppose). The problem is companies attempting to turn almost everything into a subscription, even those that don't need significant regular updates or maintenance.

Right, and that's a fair preference, as long as we understand that some people have different preferences. I'm in completely opposite camp - I'm paying ridiculous amount of money a month for apps that I use once or twice a year. I am also paying money for apps I use all the time but that I'll lose the moment I stop paying.

I have frequently rejected a $5/month app that I would've happily bought for $30, even if I know I only need it once and can cancel after a month (utility type software usually).

The same is true for like Salesforce or other big name SaaS.

What rubs me the wrong way is when what are effectively utilities try and market themselves through a subscription. There were a couple image processing tools posted here recently that effectively just did some image transforms, and they wanted a subscription fee. I don't think that's a reasonable model, there is no reason why I'd want to pay a recurring fee for what amounts to a neat script. I think there's currently much of trying to cram utility software that doesn't provide a service into a service model

Only very rarely do I want my software to “improve over time”. That’s code for feature accumulation, which is essentially a negative for existing users but helps publishers expand their market.

Generally, there’s something I want to do. I find software that does it in a way I like. I want to have that software, exactly as I encountered it, so that I can do the thing that I want to do in the way that I want to do it.

Changing the interface every 18 months to accommodate the 217 new and irrelevant-to-me things it does is not usually what I was looking for.

Occasionally, there is a specific new thing I want to do and I go looking for software that does it. If it’s from a publisher whose work I liked previously, I’ll likely turn to them first and will decide if I like what they’re now selling.

But again, that’s me and my goal looking for software when I need it. Adding new noise to the thing I paid for (or am paying for) is almost always a nuisance and inconvenience that removes value from my prior choice.

This is not true. One particular problem is that developers no longer have to compete with their "n-1" release, which means a product can regress but the customer is locked in regardless. Especially if proprietary data formats or some kind of cloud storage is involved.

In theory, maybe. In reality, I doubt it. Personally, I don't feel my interests are very much aligned with, or even cared about by, subscription software developers.

> I would much rather have 20 apps that I pay $10/mo/ea for than to buy one new $600 app a quarter and hope the developers I bought from years ago still care about me even though they will never make another dime.

Here's the thing, though: in that latter case, even if the devs no longer care about you, you still have the software, and it still works. Conversely, subscription devs may "care" about you until they get bored, or get acquihired, or run out of money, etc. and then suddenly you no longer have the software. Or they'll start making some silly or abusive changes, and then you'll be wishing the devs no longer cared.

This is to say: there's a risk attached to subscriptions (or, put another way, extra value in one-time purchase model).

Also, too little is being said about the other cost of subscriptions, which does not show up on the sticker price: each subscription is a business relationship. A relationship I need to keep track of, and which regularly reminds itself on my existence (unless the vendor is making money on forgotten subscriptions - then it stays perfectly quiet) - costing me time, effort, and occupying my memory. Importantly, it's also a relationship I don't want to have in the first place.

When I go to a grocery store to buy some bread, I want to... buy some bread. I don't want to enter into a relationship with the bakery, or their supplier. Today, I get the bread, they get the cash, and that's the end of it. Tomorrow, I may come back to the same place, or go somewhere else. It's the same with software: I may pay once, or top it up repeatedly, but all I care about is software - I don't give two damns about the company making it, or other products they have. I never, ever want to think about them. Subscriptions force me into such relationships. I have a limited capacity for them - my phone operator, utility companies, HOA, etc. are already enough.

Going back to the bakery example, theoretically I do enter a relationship with a seller every time I buy something from a physical or on-line store - a relationship I can use to e.g. get my goods fixed or my money back if something is wrong with the purchase. However, this is fully covered by consumer protection regulations, which means I can safely ignore those relationships - they literally reduce to "keep a proof of purchase, read up on relevant procedure when the vendor fucks up". Subscriptions would be nicer if they worked this way too.

Maybe compared to pay-once. But the pay-for-every-major-version model that used to be common also provides an incentive to improve, while avoiding redesign churn: the amount of sales you get is directly correlated to how much better your new version is. Meanwhile with subscriptions you mainly have to update the design to attract new customers, your old customers are stuck paying unless you become worse than your competitors.

Question: I couldn’t find this with a quick skim of the site on my phone. Do you have an API?

If you download a free app from the App Store that has some obscure in-app purchases or subscription, that's not a problem either, because you didn't purchase anything yet.

Google on the other hand only provides a range on the Play Store. "In-app purchases: $0.99 – $74.99 per item" is worthless information.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the Apple subscription interface, too, but I wish it wasn't the only reasonable way for devs to monetize ongoing work.

  No subscription
  No hoarding my personal data
  Updated in the last year or so

I'd pay $20, maybe $25 for an app the just let me play a simple tile game. But greed rules the app world.